In the quest for improving levels of program and project performance, one logical contributor is the matching of managers to the nature of the work being undertaken. The argument is that the better the work is suited to the abilities of the manager (the worker), the more likely high performance results. There are a number of challenges with this is practice concerning the highly subjective nature of “the work” and “fit” between the worker and their work, the dynamic nature of the work, and whether there is any evidence that better fit really does lead to better performance. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to explore the linkage between the core concepts of the work and the worker and to use existing frameworks to evaluate a potential operationalization of this linkage. The work is evaluated using an assessment of the complexity or difficulty of the task, and the worker is evaluated by using an assessment of their conception level. An exploratory study provided some useful indicators of the challenges

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